A Handbook of Romanticism Studies

A Handbook of Romanticism Studies features a collection of original essays by leading scholars, examining  the literature of the Romantic period through the lens of critical and cultural theory. The entries explore key terms organized under the headings of Aesthetics and Media, Theories of Literature, Ideologies and Institutions, and Disciplinary Intersections. Some of these terms have been central to Romanticism studies for some time, such as imagination, sublime, and poetics. Other terms reflect critical trends of the last thirty years, including philosophy, race, historiography, and visual culture. The result is a collection which provides both introductory overviews and in–depth analyses of a variety of topics, offering a wide range of entry points to the study of Romanticism, from debates over the formal properties of high art to the impact of philosophical and scientific debates on conceptions of culture and cultural works. A Handbook of Romanticism Studies is an accessible and indispensible resource providing both students and scholars with a rich array of historical and up–to–date critical and theoretical contexts for the study of the literature and culture of the Romantic period.

Acknowledgments vii

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction 1
Joel Faflak and Julia M. Wright

Part 1: Aesthetics and Media 17

1 Imagination 19
Richard C. Sha

2 Sensibility 37
Julie Ellison

3 Sublime 55
Anne Janowitz

4 Periodicals 69
Kristin Flieger Samuelian and Mark Schoenfield

5 Visual Culture 87
Sophie Thomas

Part 2: Theories of Literature 105

6 Author 107
Elizabeth A. Fay

7 Reader 125
Stephen C. Behrendt

8 Poetics 143
Jacqueline Labbe

9 Narrative 159
Jillian Heydt–Stevenson

10 Drama 177
David Worrall

11 Gothic 195
Jerrold E. Hogle

12 Satire 213
Steven E. Jones

Part 3: Ideologies and Institutions 225

13 Historiography 227
Ted Underwood

14 Ideology 245
Orrin N. C. Wang

15 Nation and Empire 259
Julia M. Wright

16 Class 277
Michael Scrivener

17 Race 289
Peter J. Kitson

18 Gender and Sexuality 307
Kari Lokke

Part 4: Disciplinary Intersections 325

19 Philosophy 327
Marc Redfield

20 Religion 339
Michael Tomko

21 Science 357
Theresa M. Kelley

22 Medicine 375
James Robert Allard

23 Psychology 391
Joel Faflak

Index 409

Joel Faflak is Professor of English and Theory at Western University, where he is Director of the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities. He is author of Romantic Psychoanalysis: The Burden of the Mystery (2007), co–author of Revelation and Knowledge: Romanticism and Religious Faith (2011) and editor of Sanity, Madness, Transformation: The Psyche of Romanticism (2005).

Julia M. Wright is Professor of English at Dalhousie University.  She is the author of Blake, Nationalism, and the Politics of Alienation (2004), Ireland, India, and Nationalism in Nineteenth–Century Literature (2007), and Representing the National Landscape in Irish Romanticism (2014), and the editor of a number of other volumes, including Irish Literature, 1750–1900: An Anthology (2008) and the two–volume Companion to Irish Literature (2010).